MY health and fitness blog

Workouts for strong legs are important for everyone, it doesn’t matter if you are trying to build muscles or lose weight, you need strong legs to support you throughout your daily activities and your workouts.

By using the correct training you can strengthen your legs allowing you to go miles without getting tired or risking injury from muscle strain. Below there are a few of the best workouts for strong legs. You can do these exercises anywhere without the need for any special equipment.

Lunges

The lunge is a staple in any leg workout.

How To:

1. To start, while resting your hands on your hips stand with your legs a shoulder-width apart.
2. Keep your upper body straight, with your shoulders relaxed, your chin up and your torso tight.
3. Take a step forward with one leg, while lowering your hips until your knees are bent at 90 degrees. Don’t push your front knee too far, just keep it above the ankle, and make sure the other knee doesn’t hit the floor.
4. Exhaling, keeping all the weight in your heels, push back up to the starting position.

Tips:
Pick a focal point in front of you and focus on it so as to avoid looking down. Start by practising good form, build up your routine slowly until you can do multiple sets and reps. Lunges can be stressful on your joints, and it may take some time for you to get into proper shape.

Another great body weight exercise that can help to burn fat and also strengthen the legs is the walking lunge. Simply do the lunges in a walking fashion swapping from one leg to the other leg.

Dead Lifts With Dumbbells

Deadlifts are a very popular exercise, they target the lower back, glutes, and the hamstring muscles.

How To:

1. Start in a standing position, holding a dumbbell (you can use a barbell with or without a weight) in both hands.
2. Position your legs a shoulder-width apart, with your knees slightly bent,.
3. Your arms should be hanging straight down, shoulder-width apart.
4. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and keep your chest high.
5. Breath n slowly, tighten your torso while bending from the hips and pushing your rear-end back. Whilst doing this, make sure that your chin is tucked in and your shoulder blades are retracted.
6. Bend and slide your dumbbells down as far as you can (not going further than your mid-shin though), until you feel your hamstring muscles stretch.
7. Take a short pause, and while breathing out, squeeze your glutes as you rise back to the starting position.
Tips:
You should not rush deadlifts. Keep your back arched throughout the exercise and maintain proper form.

One-Leg Wall Squats

One leg wall squats specifically target the quads, and also helps to strengthen the glutes, abs, calves, and hamstrings.

How To:

1. Begin by standing with your back flat against the wall.
2. With your palms against the wall, place your arms on your hips or on your sides,.
3. With feet hip-width apart, bend your knees slowly at 90 degrees to a squatting position.
4. Lift one foot off the floor and extend your leg out in front of you.
5. While still pressed against the wall, lower your torso, going down until your other thigh is parallel to the floor. Make sure your extended leg doesn’t touch the ground.
6. Pause for a few seconds and squeeze your glutes.
7. Straighten your supporting leg and push yourself against the wall back to the starting position.

Perform this exercise for 10 reps, and switch to the other leg.

Tips:
Ensure your back is straight and it is kept pressed against the wall throughout the whole exercise. Keep your head up, with eyes focused directly in front of you. As you push yourself up, make sure your pelvis doesn’t come forward. You can also use a stability ball while doing this exercise for more variety and added resistance.

Single Leg Touchdowns

Last in this set of four workouts for strong legs are simple leg touchdowns, they can provide impressive results effectively working the leg muscles.

How To:
1. Start by balancing yourself on one leg, feet pointing forward.
2. Keep your spine in a neutral position, making sure your back is neither rounded nor overly arched. Tighten your torso.
3. Slowly bend your hips and knee to a squatting position, as if you are going to sit in a chair.
4. Reach down, and using your opposite hand, touch the balanced foot.
5. Hold this position for a few seconds
6. Keep your torso tight as you slowly return to the starting position.
7. Repeat 8 to 12 times before switching to the other leg.

Tips:
You must perform this exercise slowly so as to maintain your balance and keep the tension constant on your leg muscles. If you have difficulty doing this exercise try reaching as far as your mid-shin instead of all the way down.

Cross Fit is hailed as the “Workout of the Day”. It is defined as being constantly varied, highly intense functional movement. Cross Fit is made up of functional movements that are designed to build up strength and to improve functional performance.

Why Add Cross Fit To Your Own Fitness Regime?

Adding Cross Fit into your own fitness regime will change your workouts and make them more competitive. Cross Fit can provide you with an adrenaline rush that will help you and your workout friends achieve your fitness goals in a supportive and friendly manner.

It will help you to vary your normal fitness regime, making it less boring, less repetitive and above all more challenging. There is nothing worse than getting bored with your exercise regime.

Adding Cross Fit to your normal fitness regime will help you to build muscle whilst you burn fat. This is down to the mix of Cross Fit exercises which join together exercises such as deadlifts and squats which are designed to develop your strength, with burpees and pushups that are known to burn off that extra fat.

Furthermore, combining these exercises with your normal exercise regime will boost your metabolism, allowing you to continue to burn even more calories after you have finished exercising, this is really helpful if your overall goal is to lose weight.

As well as this using Cross Fit as a supplement to your exercise routine will help you leave your comfort zone. Adding something new to your regime can help you by testing your limits and move out of your comfort zone.

In general people tend to avoid exercises that they struggle with or just don’t enjoy, this can lead to imbalances in muscle structure, overuse injuries and a even affect the coordination in one leg to the other.

As Cross Fit changes the way you exercise to include procedures that you don’t always want to do. It uses the muscles that you will not use in your normal exercise routine and helps to reinforce your underused systems, such as your anaerobic system.

You should therefore add Cross Fit to your normal weekly exercise routine. You may be surprised to know that Cross Fit is real easy on your body. Other sports have a tendency to strain muscles and joints that they use repeatedly carrying out repetitive routines.

As Cross Fit is such a wide ranging routine, there is less chance of any strains. Adding Cross Fit to your regular fitness regime will give you a wider range of exercises that will allow your body to rest between fitness workouts.

How To Add Cross Fit To Your Regular Exercise Regime

The first thing you should do if you want to add Cross Fit to your regular fitness routine is to take a look at your current routine.

• Are they targeting specific muscle groups more than others?

• Are they very repetitive?

• Do you want to strengthen, improve or add to your routine?

First of all cut out any workouts that appear to be repetitive or useless. You need to change all your workouts at the same time, Cross Fit and non-Cross Fit. Change them all to full-body workouts this will help you get into the Cross Fit mentality.

It is also recommended that you take a rest day after every workout day, so you give your body the time to recover between your workouts. Working out every day is not always good for your body as it can lead to fatigue and over-training.

There is a chance that you could get exhausted and this can lead to you losing the enthusiasm you have for your training regime and quit altogether.

Conclusion

The bottom line is Cross Fit has many benefits, it is a really unique way to workout that can enhance you overall level of fitness and stop you getting bored with your exercise regime.

See if there is a Cross Fit gym near you. Check it out, they will likely let you try a class before you commit to joining a class.

Incorporating personal fitness training into your live is probably the most common problem that anyone will face. Everyone knows that they should stay in shape, but many people simply don’t know how to. With the abundance of information out there it can be really discouraging if you can not work out where to start first.

With the large selection of fast foods that are available these days it is so easy for you to crab something quick and before you know it them extra pounds are adding up. That along with the fact that most jobs are a lot less physical these days compared to what they where say 100 years ago. Our lives have got a lot easier and a lot less manual, most people never walk anywhere these days.

We are all aware of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and that a healthy diet and personal fitness is good for us. However the problem for most people is that they don’t know where to start. So where do you start? Well the most important thing to do if you are going to be making changes to your diet and especially your exercise regime is to contact your doctor and get his approval to start exercising. He will tell you any risks you may be facing in starting your journey to personal fitness and he may even give you some tips on how to ease into things.

Once you have got the OK from your doctor there are 5 simple steps that you can try to help you get started:

Make the Decision To Eat Right and Start Exercising

Committing to a decision that you have made is your first step. It has to mean something when you say to yourself “I need to get in shape”. When you think about things like: What exercises can I do? When can I exercise? What foods should I be eating? You should be coming up with answers in your mind. You need to be 100% committed to your decision, only when you are will you be able to change your behaviour, let go of the past and take the first step to moving forward.

Write Down Your Goals

Be realistic with your goals, it’s no good setting goals that are to big especially at the start. Make sure you write down everything you do in the space of a week including what you do on a weekend. Including the times you spend working, commuting to work, the time you spend at home with your family, any time you spend socializing and anything else you can think of. You should make a separate list for each day of the week.

Here’s the reason why you should do this. If you know your schedule you can work out the amount of time you can realistically set aside in the week to start exercising. It is pointless saying you are going to exercise for 2 hours a day if in reality you can only manage to change your schedule to fit in 30 minutes a day

Do Your Research
Many people fail because they do not have enough information before they start to exercise. These days getting the information you need is a lot easier, as we live in the information age, you can get information on just about everything online these days. However the trick is not to go mad and overload your self with information. Find a source of information that starts out at your level and take notes, I will be adding more nutrition and fitness info as time goes by. Start of with simple workouts. It may seem a waste of time to start with exercises that you can do easily, however if you start with really hard workouts you will only fail and get disheartened.

If you can afford it you can always sign up at your local gym or hire a personal trainer to help you get started. A personal trainer will help to create an exercise plan for you and give you basic information on how to eat healthier. This is also the best option if you have never exercised for a long time, if you are in your forties and the last exercise you did was at school your body will not take to well to hitting it with to much exercise.

Make it Simple at Start

If you have an hectic schedule the last thing you need is and elaborate plan, keeping it simple will help to keep it easy. Work out your plan across the week, find 3 or 4 days when you can spare 30 minutes and set a goal to change your eating habits. Simply deciding to eat a little bit less at every sitting will do to start with.

Set a Start Date and Stick To Your Plan

Once you have your plan set your start date and stick to it. Check your plan every day when you get up and follow it, mentally preparing yourself is very important. Writing your schedule down and reading it daily will help you achieve your goals. Create yourself a daily check list of activities so that when you have completed your task you can mark it off your list. This will show you that you what you have accomplished.

I hope this broad outline can help you get started on your route to personal fitness. Life these days is really full on for most people and finding time to change your life for the better is always difficult at the start. Just remember that even small changes can add up along your path and the more committed you are to your personal fitness training the greater and quicker you will see results in the quality of your life.

When it comes to getting older many men have no problems resorting to extreme measures, some even going under the knife to maintain their youth and fend off old age. Others amongst us like to stick to a more natural approach and reverse aging naturally.

Is your body starting to show signs of ageing? Are you seeing more and more grey hairs, are those wrinkles starting to show? The first thing you should do is to look at the way that your body is ageing, is it an issue of mobility or lack of energy? Are you starting to see more and more health issues creeping in as you get older?

Most issues you suffer from as you age can be reversed if you understand how your body works and the ways you can combat them naturally, allowing you to look and feel better as you get older. After all looking and feeling old is not natural, it’s just something that you have to accept.

Once you have discovered just how your body is ageing, you can start to do something about it and work on ways that you can reverse the damage before it’s too late. Maybe you have noticed that the wrinkles on your skin are starting to get more and more prominent.

Looking like a 70 year old when you are only 55 is no good for anyone. The truth is you do not have to sit back and accept it, there are things you can do about it. First of all find out what is contributing to your ageing skin.

Do you smoke? Then quit now! Smoking damages your bodies cells both topically and internally, this causes the fine lines that are forming around your mouth. Quitting smoking will slow down your skins ageing process, helping you retain the appearance of youthful looking skin and reverse aging skin naturally.

Do you spend a lot of time sitting in the sun? If you aren’t covering your self with sun block then the suns powerful rays will dehydrated your skin. Making your skin look wrinkled and causing uneven blotches. Using a recommended sun block will allow you to achieve that tanned look you are after without the risk of speeding up your skins ageing process.

There are many other factors that can affect us as we grow older. One problem more men find themselves suffering from is type 2 Diabetes, myself I was only 35 when I was diagnosed with it.

However as I discovered it’s not something you have to sit back and accept. You first need to educate yourself about proper care, taking action and improving your lifestyle can dramatically reduce the effects that it has has on your health.

With this blog I hope to provide you with advice and help you discover the many natural things that you can use to help reverse signs of aging naturally.